Even across the border, there is the desperate, and unsubstantiated, claim that using fertility control will stop the roundups…lulling us all with a false sense of hope. – Debbie Coffey
SOURCE: metronews.ca
By John Cotter, The Canadian Press
EDMONTON – A private group working to help Alberta manage its wild horse population says it will only be able to save up to a third of the animals that could be captured this month.
The province wants up to 60 of the feral horses rounded up in an area northwest of Calgary and south of the Red Deer River to keep the size of the herd from growing too large.
Bob Henderson of the Wild Horses of Alberta Society said that he expects they may be able to put up to 20 of the captured horses up for adoption from its facility near Sundre.
“We can or will take as many as we can but we are limited by space and finances. Probably 20 at the most,” Henderson said Thursday.
“We would love to save them all but we can only do what we can do.”
Henderson said any horses captured beyond that number, and any of the animals older than two will be sold at auction and likely end up at slaughterhouses for meat.
Older wild horses are difficult to “gentle down” and tame, Henderson said.
The province estimates there are about 880 feral horses in the Rocky Mountain foothills area and they are damaging grasslands used for livestock grazing and by wildlife such as elk.
The government says the horses are not native to Alberta but are descendants of domestic animals used in logging and mining operations in the early 1900s.
In November the society signed a five-year contract with the province to help manage the herd.
Henderson said they are vaccinating mares in the wild with a contraceptive dart gun that prevents them from conceiving foals for up to three years.
The group, which receives no government funding, started the vaccination program a few weeks ago. Progress is slow but steady.
So far a team of volunteers have shot 10 mares with barbless vaccine darts that fall out of the horse after delivering the dose of contraceptive. The goal is to vaccinate up to 20 mares this season.
Henderson said if their efforts are successful, perhaps the annual feral horse roundups will someday become a thing of the past.
“We strongly believe that this is a very effective and humane tool for the government to manage our wild horse population.”
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Cattle again causing another roundup and horses going to slaughter. So sad .
Debbie, you are right about fertility control giving them a false sense of hope. Why can’t others realize this ? The removals will continue as extinction is the goal.
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They are not wild but descendent from escaped worker horses. Where exactly did the worker horses come from? A witches’ pot? People are blind and lazy. Luclky for them the horse has been such a friend to help them build their country. Too bad mankind doesn’t have two morals to rub together.
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Exactly Jan–man again gets to decide who lives and who dies—-another example why the horse is the most betrayed animal on Earth.
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Seems nothing is safe in Canada either. http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2015/02/08/some-wolf-news
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Yes Barbara,
Cattle AGAIN causing another roundup and horses going to slaughter.
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In case anyone can use this:
569.008. “Feral livestock” defined “Feral livestock” means any formerly domesticated livestock or progeny of domesticated livestock which have become wild and are running at large upon public or private lands in the State of Nevada, and which have no physical signs of domestication. The term does not include horses or burros that are subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Government pursuant to the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1331 to 1340, inclusive, and any regulations adopted pursuant thereto, or any other federal statute or regulation.
Click to access nevada.pdf
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Three years after the horsemeat scandle are we any closer to knowing what we are eating? http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/three-years-after-horsemeat-scandal-are-we-any-closer-knowing-what-were-eating
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This is one sad, sorry world that we live in. There is no respect for the land nor the wild life with the existence of livestock ranchers. It makes me glad that I had no children because we leave them nothing. All they will get is a waste land…..
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The original agreement for PZP contraception in Alberta was for 10-18 mares, with NO CAPTURES OR CULLS. WHOAS and ESRD made a dirty deal cutting out key members, members with backbone I might add, and then changed the agreement to increase the number of mares AND captures and culls allowed except in the small target area. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD SIGN AN AGREEMENT LIKE THAT!!! Only WHOAS. Now we have PZP, culls and captures. The wild horses will be gone soon. Don’t agree to PZP, you can’t trust any Government, and fight to keep your wild horses free in their rightful place, that being, on Public Lands.
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What I see in Alberta is disgusting. At times, I do not feel happy about what my provincial government is doing .The issue with the wild horses is one such example. These horses are not harming anyone. Leave them alone!
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The Surprising History of America’s Wild Horses
Jay F. Kirkpatrick and Patricia M. Fazio
http://www.livescience.com/9589-surprising-history-america-wild-horses.html
In recent years, molecular biology has provided new tools for working out the relationships among species and subspecies of equids. For example, based on mutation rates for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Ann Forstén, of the Zoological Institute at the University of Helsinki, has estimated that E. caballus originated approximately 1.7 million years ago in North America. More to the point is her analysis of E. lambei, the Yukon horse, which was the most recent Equus species in North America prior to the horse’s disappearance from the continent. Her examination of E. lambei mtDNA (preserved in the Alaskan permafrost) has revealed that the species is genetically equivalent to E. caballus. That conclusion has been further supported by Michael Hofreiter, of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, who has found that the variation fell within that of modern horses.
Customarily, such wild horses that survive today are designated “feral” and regarded as intrusive, exotic animals, unlike the native horses that died out at the end of the Pleistocene. But as E. caballus, they are not so alien after all. The fact that horses were domesticated before they were reintroduced matters little from a biological viewpoint. Indeed, domestication altered them little, as we can see by how quickly horses revert to ancient behavioral patterns in the wild.
The wild horse in the United States is generally labeled non-native by most federal and state agencies dealing with wildlife management, whose legal mandate is usually to protect native wildlife and prevent non-native species from having ecologically harmful effects. But the two key elements for defining an animal as a native species are where it originated and whether or not it coevolved with its habitat. E. caballus can lay claim to doing both in North America. So a good argument can be made that it, too, should enjoy protection as a form of native wildlife.
Jay F. Kirkpatrick, who earned a Ph.D. in reproductive physiology from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, has studied fertility control for wild horses. He is the director of the Science and Conservation Center at ZooMontana, in Billings.
Patricia M. Fazio, a research fellow at the Science and Conservation Center, earned her Ph.D. in environmental history from Texas A&M University. Her interests include reproductive physiology, the monitoring of wild horse ranges, and the evolution of equids.
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THE WILD HORSES OF SABLE ISLAND
http://dutescoart.com/the-artist/
“In 2008, the Canadian government identified Sable Island as a protected national treasure under the Canada Shipping Act, Bill #227, as a result of Dutesco’s efforts.”
Roberto Dutesco has been revealing the beauty of nature and the human spirit through his photography for more than three decades. He first learned of Sable Island and its wild horses in 1994 and made his first trip to the island that same year.
As Dutesco discovered the island for himself over the course of several visits, he captured the beauty and isolation of the wild horses and their austere habitat through still photography and 16-mm film. His incredible journey is presented in a full-length documentary entitled Chasing Wild Horses, which has aired many times on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and other media outlets in the U.S. and Europe.
In 2008, the Canadian government identified Sable Island as a protected national treasure under the Canada Shipping Act, Bill #227, as a result of Dutesco’s efforts. He says, “This legislation underscores the point that, if natural locations like this are to endure, they must be left alone. I have spent the last eighteen years dedicated to that belief and will continue to work for their preservation for the future.”
CHASING WILD HORSES
http://www.dutesco.com/chasingwildhorses.html
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The research Karen Sussman with http://www.ISPMB.org has done to prove wild horses will only reproduce at 10% or less if their complex society is not broken up. The band stallion will prevent the young stallions from breeding . The NAS study found no excess population also and roundups will continue even with PZP . NAS found the removals to cause the increase in breeding too.
It makes no sense to use fertility control when there is no over-population and 70% of the herds are not genetically viable and sustainable. It will only help BLM to “manage for extinction”. JMHO.
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It is another excuse, they waist more money on stupid things. And the cattle. It is all about who can pay out the most money. This has been going on for how long, unless you have the money and the clout, this is never going to stop. People like Wickman and other cattle, ex blm people are the ones who are evil and cruel and don’t give a damn about the horses or any other animal.
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I found this interesting, I thought you might too. From the Sierra Club Green Life:
“Why the Sierra Nevada red fox population is so low is still somewhat of a mystery, but two contributing factors are cattle grazing and winter recreation.
Cattle grazing can drive out moles and voles, the foxes’ primary food source, and winter activities like snowmobiling pack down the snow, making it harder for the foxes to dig through for food and providing their natural predators—coyotes, for instance—easier access to the high-altitude areas the foxes favor.
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The condoned use of PZP or any form of it will evenually sterlize all the mares , It the BLMs answer to complete eradification of Our wild mustangs , we must stop its use on an already below population of our Wild mustangs !!!!! STOP THE USE OF PZP or any form of it or we will have no Wild mustangs ……..
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What if we reverse the name of thhe species? What if we say, capture and control 132 million (or some other random number) humans who have overpopulated the area given to them and run out of forage? These calls to capture horses is nothing more than a bowing to feeding industries created to profit through slaughter, and every hand out in the process.
BAN the slaughter of horses, wild bisons, wild elk, any wild creature. Their lives are not ours to take. Our management is false and surely PZP is ONLY an excuse to capture horses regularly.
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